Why Isn’t My Professor Conservative?

A drop in right-identifying faculty doesn't prove a rise in academic bias.

The Heterodox Academy blog is circulating an overview of political opinion among college faculty. As the graph shows, more professors lean to the left today than even a few decades ago. At National Review, Michael Strain raises questions about this trend. As a member of the mere 5% of professors who identify as conservative, I have some ideas about the answers. My thoughts are interspersed with Strain’s questions below.

1. What drives this? Is there much actual discrimination against conservatives in hiring and tenure decisions at universities? Or is the relative absence of conservatives in humanities and social science departments almost entirely driven by self-selection — is it instead the case that people who go into Ph.D. programs are majority liberal, and that people who graduate with Ph.D.s and who choose to go into faculty positions are (nearly) exclusively liberal?

There’s no single cause. As the original post points out, this is partly a matter of generational replacement. The cohort of professors who started their careers in the’50s and early ’60s was more balanced, with a lot of moderates as well as some conservatives. When they retired, they were replaced by Baby Boomers who came of age in the heyday of the student movement. Some radical activists and sympathizers liked college so much they stayed on. That explains part of the shift around the early ’90s.

Paul Krugman raises a second possibility: that the right took a turn for the extreme that alienated erstwhile sympathizers. The problem with Krugman’s analysis is that it depends on a conflation of conservatism with the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives. A more plausible explanation that emphasizes political events is that the big dip in conservative identification after 2004 reflects opposition to the Iraq War.

Like most conservatives, Strain wonders whether discrimination plays a role. My sense is that there’s not much intentional exclusion. In the natural sciences and many professional fields, politics would be very unlikely to come up in the hiring and promotion process.

Ideology is more obvious in the humanities and social sciences. When talking about discrimination in these disciplines, it’s important to distinguish among “flavors” of conservatism. Speaking broadly, economic libertarianism or foreign-policy hawkishness are considered eccentric but tolerable. Public criticism of the sexual revolution, on the other hand, is not okay. Of all the tribes of the right, conservative Christians face the biggest obstacles.

There may be another contributing factor: the adjunctification of the faculty. During the same period the graph covers, instructors working off the tenure track have become a considerable majority. Adjuncting is not an experience that promotes enthusiasm for conservative principles. A more precarious faculty is a likely to be a more left-leaning one.

2. Let’s say it’s driven by selection. Then why are progressives so much more likely than conservatives to get Ph.D.s? What is it about being a professor and doing research and teaching that are more attractive to liberals than conservatives? What is it about the university environment?

All these considerations have to be taken into account when we think about self-selection. Conservatives are less likely to pursue academic careers because they don’t think they’ll find success in an already Darwinian job market.

They’re probably right, and not just because of discrimination. A more fundamental issue is that conservatives tend to be skeptics about the progressive epistemology that defines the modern university. According to this vision, the goal is to “discover new knowledge”. As a result, research is treated as more important than teaching, and teaching is understood as an assault on prejudice rather than the continuation of tradition.

This conception of the academic enterprise makes it tough to get through grad school if you see teaching as your main work or are inclined toward curatorial forms of scholarship (even though research is a relatively small element of most academic positions). Conservative social scientists may have fewer objections to this bias toward novelty. But it’s a real challenge for conservatives in the humanities.

3. Is overwhelming liberalism among humanities and social science faculty actually a significant problem? Does it affect research and teaching in the social sciences and the humanities in a non-trivial way?

It is a problem. The absence of conservatives means important questions won’t be asked and possible answers won’t be proposed and tested. A conservative presence is also important for ensuring that the curriculum includes certain classic works and unfashionable topics or methods. Finally, in a monolithically leftist academy, students won’t be exposed to a wide range of arguments and perspectives, leaving them dependent on conventional wisdom. In this respect, a stronger conservative presence is actually essential to the progressive task of challenging prejudice.

On the other hand, these are not the biggest problems the academy faces. More serious than the relative absence of political conservatives is the double threat to liberal education posed by corporatization and grievance politics. Conservatives might wish that students would read more Dante, say, or Tocqueville. But the real danger is that administrators and social justice warriors will agree that they don’t have to read anything they don’t want to.

The real question is what to do about this. Strain argues—and I agree—that ideological affirmative action is a bad idea. A more promising strategy is to reinvigorate conservative intellectual life outside the university, paying more attention to scholarship and the arts and less to politics. We’ll have a stronger case for admission to the academy when more of us make arguments or create works that can’t be ignored.

Samuel Goldman is assistant professor of political science at The George Washington University.

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47 Responses to Why Isn’t My Professor Conservative?

A more fundamental issue is that conservatives tend to be skeptics about the progressive epistemology that defines the modern university.

I think this, and much of everyone else’s analysis, is glossing over the decline in moderate identification. The decline of conservative id and moderate id are almost in parallel. Decline in moderate id is actually a little bit greater.

You can’t explain this by analyzing conservative ideology. The only way to explain this is by polarization and the way polarization has affected the politics of the public at large as well as the politics of academic culture.

At any rate, I took a moment to go to the link on Heterodox Academy, and I have to challenge this one claim of liberal orthodoxy in particular,

– Humans are a blank slate, and “human nature” does not exist.

That doesn’t explain “gays are born gay”, “transsexuals are born in the wrong body”, not having sex is repressive, fat people can’t help if they’re fat because its in their genes, people are naturally afraid of change, etc.

It’s not example of hypocrisy. I can find liberal counter-arguments to this claimed “orthodoxy” all day long in the social sciences. I think, in part, it represents a disagreement within liberal groups, as you can see in the debates between the LGBT movement and Radical Feminists.

But the more ingrained aspect of liberal orthodoxy here is that they have a tendency to reduce “human nature” to biology or psychology, though biology is more popular these days. This is why some liberals insist being gay must be biological and gays not being in relationships is repressive and harmful, while others take the opposite route and claim all sexuality is socially constructed and everyone should practice free love and be bisexual.

On the other side of this, it used to be common for conservatives to say humans were a “blank slate”, and there are many I think who still do. The difference here is that conservatives tend not to describe human nature in biological terms, but in moral or rational terms. Conservative economic theory, for instance, tends to reduce human nature to rational choice making. Conservative social theory tends to focus on morals and the consequences of certain values. This is a stark contrast to the liberal focus on biology/psychology.

In part, the conservative approach depends on the idea that people believe the way they do for a reason, and aren’t heavily conditioned by society. Society contains and carries moral traditions and rational beliefs. While liberals, on the other hand, because they tend to believe more that people are conditioned by society, and speak a lot about freeing oneself from social influences. That either ends up meaning returning to some natural behavior (heeding your body), or transcending and freeing yourself (superman in the Nietzsche sense).

I am forced to wonder how much of the move to the left is in large part driven by the anti-intellectual movement of the Republican Party. From the demonizing of the ‘intellectual elite’ to the denial of basic science like climate change, it has become increasingly difficult to remain a member of the Republican Party and yet be criticized by your own party.

As an example, social science is rife with proof that comprehensive sex education reduced teen pregnancy, has no effect on when teenagers first have sex, and reduces transmission of STD’s. Yet the Republican Party has made it part of the platform to teach abstinence only sex education, which has severe and proven negative effects.

While admittedly Conservative =\= Republican, in many ways the two are synonyms. The more the party rejects basic science, or tries to implement policy at odds with the best available research the more difficult it is to remain a party of the party.

Perhaps if the Republicans didn’t claim to be conservative anymore, and broke with that label the data would chance.

That’s part 2 of a 3 part series. The guy has a lot of talent. Too bad he’s gone to ground.

About Samuel Goldman’s other observations, academic humanities departments are imploding given the pathological and unsustainable economic model of the American university. So it will be race between conservatives attempting to get re-admitted back into the academic humanities ecosystem, and that ecosystem collapsing into a residual shell that offers only electives and advice on how to apply for food stamps.

Yeah, I think Stumble above is onto something. How would we label a biologist who accepts evolution, or a meteorologist who accepts climate change? Are they both “liberal” because they accept scientific reality that is nonetheless rejected for non-scientific reasons by movement conservatives? To me, rejection of creationism/”intelligent design” doesn’t make one “liberal”, it makes one in touch with reality. But maybe others don’t see it that way. Maybe an otherwise politically centrist biology professor would identify himself as a liberal as a specific way to Mark himself as rejecting creationist nonsense.

As an anecdote of one, I can offer only this: I used to identify of conservative-moderate and now I identify as liberal. I don’t think my views have changed all that much. The definitions have changed.

I think federally funded universities could be expected to insure “fairness” to competing points of view in their standard curriculum. Of course, this would only be as good as the judgments of the one who determines what “fairness” is. Given that most faculty are not tenured, there are plenty of ways to ensure “fairness” without interfering with anyone with tenure’s “academic freedom”.

I think if there was a heavy concentration of conservative faculty on college campuses, this is how others would attempt to correct it (if the discrimination allegations fell flat–which they usually always do for conservatives).

“To me, rejection of creationism/”intelligent design” doesn’t make one “liberal”, it makes one in touch with reality.”

Of course, you don’t define “creationism” or “intelligent design” but if “creationism” means the Earth is 6,000 years old, then that is not what “intelligent design” holds.

Further, leaving aside the ID crowd, anyone who believes in a personal God believes that the world was created, and presumably has “intelligent design”. I don’t know what you mean by “reality”, but if you are talking about an empirically measurable reality, then I don’t see how that could ever undermine an ontological commitment to a Creator (this is the whole verificationist point, religious beliefs are not empirically falsifiable).

But I am not sure an ontological commitment to a personal God is either conservative or liberal (look at MLK Jr. or many of the Black Evangelicals), but definitely trends to conservative.

I think “right-wing economics” like Friedman’s monetarism is probably over-represented in the Academy (because it serves the interests of the powerful) and I think “right-wing social conservatism” is probably under-represented in the Academy (because it serves the interests of the powerful). Speaking of which, some of Krugman’s writings suggest that he may be a closet so. con. himself, with attacks on left-wing identity politics and the excesses of the bo bo’s. In fact, if he learned some anthropology, he might even come out of the closet on this stuff.

Interesting issue. I’d like to add that this trend is not circumscribed only to the United States, in Europe and in the Americas happens the same. It seems to exist a structural cause beyond countries that has lead in recent decades to an identification of professors with leftist positions. Some “progressive” matters such as gay marriage, abortion-euthanasia legalization, or environmental consciousness, stormed into public opinion at global scale setting the stage for what could be considered political correctness. Socially the lost of academic autonomy of universities due to corporatist policies, the funds to research specific issues, plus the increasing uniformization of thought in mass society, have paved the way for a superficial and relativist knowledge devoid of moral stature. At the personal level, many opportunistic scholars seek for job within academia and tend to escalate positions, associating high degrees with some kind of new nobility. The blue blood of pseudo-scholars belonging to a liberal mass society. Who pays for being conservative today? In a modern society seems to be more an instinct of self spiritual preservation and moral conviction.

In part, the conservative approach depends on the idea that people believe the way they do for a reason, and aren’t heavily conditioned by society. Society contains and carries moral traditions and rational beliefs. While liberals, on the other hand, because they tend to believe more that people are conditioned by society, and speak a lot about freeing oneself from social influences.

Not sure where you get that. Conservatives I have read strongly indicate that society conditions its members, hence the push for morality legislation, etc. (although, when you get right down to it, all legislation is morality legislation – it’s just a matter of whose morality). Good grief, the entire premise of the culture wars is that society aka culture conditions people.

Of course the short answer to why more profs aren’t conservative is likely self-selection. The cost/benefit of being a prof vs. in private sector doesn’t hold a lot of appeal for many conservatives. As hard as it is to get a good paying job out of college, it is even more difficult to make it in academia. And with the internet being what it is, you can still bloviate your ideas with an even wider audience.

The notion that university faculty have become more left-wing because a few evangelicals reject evolution and quite a few conservative politicians are skeptical of global warming is risible in the extreme and suggests a rather obvious lack of familiarity with contemporary university life. (The intelligent design argument has much more to do with philosophical theology than physics, as KD has pointed out, and is irrelevant to the point that Ian G so hack-handedly attempts to make.) First, the natural sciences, along with mathematics and some vocational disciplines like engineering and business, are the least politicized programs on university campuses. Second, there is a small but significant number of climate scientists who reject the consensus on global warming. They do so for scientific reasons, not political ones. They may be wrong, but it is highly doubtful that any of the interlocutors on this particular post are qualified to make that determination.

Professor Goldman is correct about the two forces undermining university education today. From the right, we have pressure to make our students ready for the places as cogs in the infernal economic machine, and from the left we have pressure to convert our students to various dogmas of contemporary cultural neo-Marxism (for want of a better catch-all term). Both the right and the left suffer from the almost irremediable error of believing that liberal arts education ought to be concerned, first and foremost, with being relevant to the issues of contemporary life. This is a pernicious falsehood and should be attacked by all who care for the liberal arts. (Lessing once wrote, ‘what’s the use of use?’ and this should be posted on the door of every liberal arts classroom.)

Regarding pressure from the right, it has certainly been the case that many conservative politicians have denigrated the value of a liberal arts education because of its apparent lack of utility in terms of attaining gainful employment. This has probably led to some sort of self-selection out of those fields, which has, in turn, left them to leftist political agitators who see liberal arts education as the intellectual equivalent of a neo-Stalinist reeducation camp. Thus, the real problem is not that there aren’t enough conservatives in liberal arts disciplines. Instead, the problem is that there aren’t enough serious academics in liberal arts disciplines.

And, by the way, Stumble, I’m a social scientist and your characterization of what social science has ‘proven’ about sex education, etc. is rather overblown, and it also demonstrates a rather unfortunate ignorance about the difference between a merely prudential argument (sex ed reduces teen pregnancy which is good) and a moral argument (sexual activity before marriage is inherently bad, therefore abstinence education is the only morally acceptable option). I’m not suggesting that the prudential argument is wrong, but merely that, for traditionalist conservatives and Christians, it is irrelevant.

“a few” Evangelicals reject evolution? Have you ever SEEN polling on this? Something north of 100 million Americans reject evolution. Such scientific illiteracy is a huge problem in this country, and it’s completely out of control with movement conservatives.

Furthermore, “intelligent design” IS creationism with a better PR agency. It’s an attempt to give voodoo a scientific-sounding name, in order to grant it a level of legitimacy.

Finally, don’t misuse the word “skeptic” by applying it to Republican politicians and global warming, not unless you want to call David Irving a “Holocaust skeptic”. There’s legitimate skepticism and then there’s deranged denialism. Movement conservatives are the latter when it comes to climate science.

Also, my post never addressed social sciences. It was merely speculation that scientists might be grouped with liberals for no good political reason, but only because their working theories are rejected sight unseen by the movement right. I never said I thing about the social sciences and why those departments skew left.

School is a place to educate not to impute your personal moral views. The studies on abstinance only education indicate that if it delays the loss of virginity at all it is only a matter of days, possibly weeks. Relative to the real problem this is a meaningless change, if it happens at all.

Those same studies however, indicate that children who receive abstinance only sex ed are far more likely to not use condoms or other firms of birth control, far more likely to become teen parents, far more likely to wind up on public assistance, etc.

In short you have traded at best a few weeks of no sex for an increase in the problem of teen pregnancy. All to subject children to your narrow view of morals.

It’s typical of the left to claim that only conservatives ignore the findings of ‘science!!!’. They might want to read ‘Galileo’s Middle Finger,’ which offers quite a few examples of lefties attacking scientific conclusions that they don’t like. Here’s a link to a review of the book.

While I’m at it, a more general comment–as a biology professor (notice the ‘nym), I don’t see any evidence of anti-conservative bias in the science departments I am familiar with, either here or at other universities. I don’t know or care about the religious or political views of most of my colleagues, and when I do know something it’s due to incidental info, like seeing their foreheads on Ash Wednesday. I DO know that most of us are unlikely to be registered Republicans now, even though many of us may have been 20-30 years ago, because of the modern GOP’s many explicitly anti-science actions and rhetoric, but that doesn’t have much to do with liberal versus conservative.

I’m not too familiar with the social sciences but I did have one teacher who “flirted” with communism in his youth before dismissing it as the ideology of charlatans and cranks. He kept to himself about politics but once admitted he found movement conservatism to be composed entirely of chumps and yahoos. I also had an economics instructor who was a self-admitted Republican turned Independent because of the sheer scale of gross incompetence of the Bush Administration and hated the know-nothings of his own party. You’ll see a similar trend with scientists. Scientists were 50/50 between the two parties until the 1980s with the emergence of the Christian Right. It wasn’t so much that scientists moved left, but the Republican Party moving too far to the right. So I lean towards the interpretation that a pivotal reason is how far down the rabbit hole today’s Republicans are.

I think there is a third factor at work though. Academics emphasize critical thinking and analysis, especially in the social sciences when the issues are not entirely black and white. Central tenants of Republican dogmas do not stand up to rigorous analysis. Do tax cuts pay for themselves? Academics say no, yet Republicans insist otherwise. Is climate change a hoax? Academics say no, yet Republicans insist otherwise. Is Obama a Muslim Manchurian candidate out to destroy America? Academics say no, yet Republicans insist otherwise. Ad infinitum.

Seeing the above examples, it’s not hard to see why so many academics tend to lean left: they’re not crazy.

I am going to throw in this concept, that applies more to natural science that social studies/humanities folks. Conservative naturally have a more positive view of private business than progressives. With the election of Reagan and the increase in left-vs-right conflict, conservatives who might previously have opted for academia might decide they should *act* on their beliefs and get a *real* job in the private sector.

You might recall a bit from the movie Ghostbusters when the academic flam-flam man portrayed by Bill Murphy remarked on how hard it was in the private sector. I was in grad school at the time and a fair number of peers were interested on staying in academia, even though it would mean post docs and a delay in starting an adult life already delayed by grad school. I thought similarly yet when I arrived in the private sector I thought, hey this is way better than academia. (I am a Ph.D. engineer and this was the 1980’s. It not the same today). Nevertheless it sucked already for science grads in academic even back then. It must be truly hellish today. And for non-science Ph.D.s my only question is why?

But then I am an engineer and so prone to a pragmatic view of life. Humanities folks are probably not so orientated, but you do have to eat.

It is a leftist/Marxist canard that “Intelligent Design” is inane or irrational.

So tell me what the alternative is then? Unintelligent Randomness? Apparently so.

Well it takes an extreme level of faith that I don’t have to look out at the world and infer random chance as the only possible explanation and it requires a very closed mind to exclude any other possibility.

One supposes hiring committees will choose candidates like themselves, perhaps unconsciously, even if their guidelines make an effort to prevent that. If this is true, current apparent liberal bias will prove to be part of a cycle and academia will trend in a conservative direction as society does so. The bias will be more obvious in departments like history and sociology than in chemistry or physics because any published work in the former will reveal the author’s attitudes. Unless social and political attitudes are directly examined, hard science applicants might be hired and work for several years without their leanings becoming known.

“Krugman’s analysis is that it depends on a conflation of conservatism with the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives”

The quick dismissal of the fact that the GOP has gone hard right is very wrong. The entire GOP has gone anti-intellectual in its various approaches to most issues. Going with the gut, if you will. It’s a funny side note that people who watch Fox News are less well informed (or less wrong) about current events than people who watch no news at all.

Take a closer look at global warming. There were in the recent past Republicans who would have admitted they believed in this. There was that video that Newt Gingrich made with Nancy Pelosi for Al Gore (!!!), talking about how we need to address climate change for example. You simply cannot imagine this happening now, can you? That is not to say that everyone has to believe in global warming – thought they should – the problem is that GOP political positioning trumps research, evidence and academic / scientific consensus.

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Don’t be surprised that academics would reject a political party that rejects them.

Really interesting and compelling argument, especially the bias toward novelty at research institutions. I’d never thought of that. I think you (rather conveniently) skirt around the reason why social conservatives are so rare/unwelcome in academia. Much (though not all) of the phenomena associated with social conservatism — tribalism, religious fundamentalism, chauvinism — arise from ignorance. Education, by definition, extinguishes these phenomena. To scold a university for not embracing ignorance is like scolding a police force for not committing enough crime.

It is important to keep in mind that these studies typically focus on elite and “flagship” state universities. The majority of US college students are enrolled in institutions outside of this realm. Little mention is made of the faculty at the state colleges and community colleges that provide the majority of student contact hours in higher ed. Studies that have addressed these faculty groups suggest that they are more moderate/conservative than their peers at elite institutions.

Media attention given to the invariably liberal phenomenon of “campus craziness” is generally focused on private institutions with a fairly affluent student body. These students and their instructors stand in contrast to their counterparts at many public institutions (the system-based “directionals” in particular) who lack the time and economic resources to bother much with highly politicized shenanigans. These people work diligently to absorb and impart the benefits of “higher education,” all the while hoping that some partisan idiot (of either stripe) won’t say or do anything stupid to further damage the college experience for everyone involved.

That said, an a la carte, digital delivery-based society has diminished the appreciation of the college experience as a whole. Decades ago, one’s academic career
was considered incomplete without at least one rabidly socialist professor, witnessing a hilarious clash between the campus anarcho-punks and a few drunken college Republicans, and at least one art or literature elective that required the perusal of some arty pornography. This accepting attitude has been replace by a “how come I gotta” attitude towards education at all levels.

Much (though not all) of the phenomena associated with social conservatism — tribalism, religious fundamentalism, chauvinism — arise from ignorance.

Religious fundamentalism (whatever that means), possibly, but do you have the slightest evidence that tribalism and chauvinism result from ignorance?

It’s more the opposite: it’s precisely contact with different ethnic groups which makes us more ethnocentric and tribal, which explains why Europe has moved in the direction of increased ethnic tribalism as it’s become more diverse in the last few decades. There are lots of studies involving semi-random refugee relocation, etc., that demonstrate this. There is also no shortage of countries (in Eastern Europe and East Asia, specifically), with a highly educated population, long history of academic achievement, and also extreme ethnic tribalism. (I’ll concede that these parts of the world also do tend to be secular: education and knowledge do tend to weaken organized religion, but they don’t really weaken ethnic tribalism).

Further, leaving aside the ID crowd, anyone who believes in a personal God believes that the world was created, and presumably has “intelligent design”.

Um, no. It’s perfectly plausible to believe in a God and also believe he didn’t have much to do with the creation of the physical world.

The world (and particularly, the biological world) is really not very well designed, so intelligent design is very weak on theological grounds even before we get to scientific grounds.

I’m loving all the climate change worshippers here. How many predictions have been made by climate change scientists that have NOT come true? Only a few hundred. If they were Old Testament prophets instead of High Priests of the Church of Climate most of them would have been stoned to death by now. Al Gore, when faced with all his predictions that didn’t happen, said, “Well, we’ve made a lot of progress since then.” With a straight face! As Bugs Bunny would say, “What a maroon!”

In the 60’s Overpopulation was going to kill us all. It didn’t, so in the 70’s the big threat was Pollution. We still lived, so in the 80’s it became the Ozone Layer. That didn’t kill everyone so in the 90’s it was the New Ice Age. Oops. The 2000’s brought global warming, but parts of the earth had record cold temps, so that was a bust. They needed a more all-encompassing threat.

Thus today we have Climate Change. Temps go up or down, the People Who Think They’re Better Than You still win! In the 2020’s the world will not end, so a new threat will be necessary to keep the masses fearful and dependent and thus easily controlled. Stay tuned!

“Of course, you don’t define “creationism” or “intelligent design” but if “creationism” means the Earth is 6,000 years old, then that is not what “intelligent design” holds.”

I am going to foolishly tackle this. I don’t buy evolution because why the theory makes some sense. It’s missing too many parts, and too many we aren’t talking ten thousand years worth but far larger. Just because something makes sense doesn’t mean that it accurate or truth. I accept it as theory.

On both discussions concerning intelligent design if one introduces the concept of a Supreme being with unlimited power — then time just doesn’t matter. For such a being time is irrelevant. As Pastor Dr.Gresham once taught time is an everlasting principle, not one one that starts here or there and goes on to infinity. So whether it’s 6,000 or 6,000,000 it’s all the same to a being of that magnitude. I think this is where VP Pence has it correct. But does a belief in creation of any time and indication of denying science – no.

As for global warming, now climate change, the number of earth phenomenon that science has spot only to be wrecked some time later by further research suggests that something as complex as climate change as they describe it, is rife with issues, in dire need of correction. for me, it rests on what the ability to predict and the use of available factors in the equation. That the community used as excuse ignoring natural processes because they were part of the natural world, not the circular reasoning here devastates their equation. Because to get an accurate picture of events, one examines all contributing factors.

So I think it safe to say, just because one doesn’t buy the science does not in anyway suggest that they are not intellectually inclined or even that being intellectual demands believing what a large part of the community says is true.

Dr. Einstein was not considered seriously. And it was the intellectual community that rebutted his ideas.

Tesla, is only now getting the accolades he should have gotten when alive.

It was the wealthy, connected and intellectual considered giants sch as Edison that Mr Tesla, off the mark, and worse sought to undermine his achievements.

Science is not god and never has been. It has routinely engaged in self aggrandizement and then correction. While it is self serving to label challengers as intellectual midgets, climate deniers, nonintellectual, One is reminded that most of the major break throughs in science and the advance of science itself have been led by people of faith who believe in a being for whim science is but a child’s game of hopscotch.

Both Kepler and Galileo believed in a Supreme Being and all science was that being’s domain.

I wish these studies would stop tracking conservative/liberal based on political parties. I was a Democrat for years, yet I was far more conservative on exactly the issues that would make me unwelcome in academia.

One explanation could be the increasing power of administrators in universities. I am about to start a Ph.D with the goal of entering academia. To that end I removed many hints to my conservative beliefs from social media, and made it my practice to avoid political conversation. I don’t fear repercussions from those in my fairly ideologically balanced field, but many administrators are failed academics from humanities and oppression studies programs that are heavily politicized. I am most likely being excessively cautious, but the risk of politically motivated administrative backlash may be hindering other conservatives and moderates from entering academia.

Do you even know how many unproved (and unprovable) assumptions go into the theory?

For someone to have doubts about something that supposedly happened over billions of years, when none of us were even around, to be called a “science denied” is intellectually dishonest to say the least. And we don’t even need to go into the details for this much to be evident. Same goes for the Big Bang, the age of the earth and the like.

What’s really despicable is the thuggish attitude the scientific establishment has towards dissenters.

Very interesting article. It would not surprise me one bit if it turned out that there are more people of a generally conservative persuasion among business majors or science majors than liberal arts majors.

The late Theodore H. White opined that during the Sixties, studying the humanities became passe’. There was no money in it. The “real” action was in the STEM fields where knowledge was doubling…tripling…every two years. Or business administration. Put another way, what Ben Franklin would call “Useful Knowledge” became paramount in late capitalist America because, after all, in what do you do with a degree in political science, sociology, history or English? Teach? Or maybe go to law school (the usual fallback choice)? In the event, according to White the liberal arts departments in the universities and colleges of America collectively experienced something of an “identity crisis”, with their graduates amounting to what he called an “educated proletariat” whose degrees were increasingly irrelevant in a consumer driven society based upon the concept of getting and spending. The STEM departments churned out the scientists and the technologists. The business departments turned out the managers, economists and marketing people which were needed to make the fruits of science and technology available to consumer.

The smart, talented, ambitious people in America gravitate to science/technology or business while the increasingly irrelevant humanities departments give us “deconstruction” and “Queer Studies”.

I offer the observation that most people who reject the “theory of evolution,” don’t know the meaning of the word “theory.”

By the same logic they apply to evolution, number theory, graph theory, chaos theory, — you get the idea. They all are “just theories.”

I agree with the author’s assessment, the big shift in the academic world is adjunct faculty. The administrative costs of major universities have risen hundreds of percent, mostly in salaries. It’s now common for university presidents to be paid multi-million dollar salaries. To keep these budget-busting administrative costs from sinking the collegiate ship, they jettison the expensive professors and hire adjunct faculty to replace them.

The Director will coordinate 14 sections in the blended basic German language sequence (first through fourth semester), supervise and train about 10 teaching assistants, teach three advanced language and culture courses, and participate in departmental events, such as the High School Day.”

This position pays … wait for it … $28,000 for academic year. This is quoted from an advert.

Conservative Christianity is dominated by megachurches whose pastors live in mansions. Conservative politics is driven by veneration of the “almighty buck.”

It comes as no surprise that people raised in that ethos are not going to take a full-time job that pays less than $30k a year. Hell, a lot of people who weren’t raised that way wouldn’t take it, either. But some PhD in German, with years of experience and no prospects, desperate, or eager to teach, probably will.

I will say, as what might be called a heterodox leftist (leftie European person in a US humanities PhD Program, so do not align with lots of campus lefties in the US), that while there are forces trying to push out canonical authors such as Dante, it’s really pretty limited. What you’ll see in most English depts I’m familiar with, for example, is instead this: Chaucer, Shakespeare, etc, etc, taught and (in my opinion) taught thoroughly and well, but with the lenses of critical theory some of the time. What this means in my experience is that students will be informed of the trajectory of scholarly interpretation (i.e. here’s how the Wife of Bath’s Tale was read in the 50s, here are some key feminist interventions, here are some ways of looking at it now — what do you guys think? And mind you, some of these interventions have really opened up what we know about a text such as WOB. This will be addition to students learning to read the Middle English, writing papers based on very old-fashioned research, etc.). In the classes I’ve observed at my Mid-Western R1, this goes over well with students from a range of political/social backgrounds. Moreover, introducing more marginal authors, such as female Renaissance writers, or medieval authors of colour, can really open up these fields for students — I’ve seen it. They become MORE interested in old cultures, more invested in knowing the tradition and thinking critically about it (which we all want, I think).

The *real* threat to “traditional learning” in my view is the elimination of the classic humanities depts and their requirements (such as languages) in favour of light-weight degrees such as Sports Management, Appareal Merchandising, or Business (light, i.e. no solid quantitative skills), degrees that incidentally also do terribly at job placement, worse than a solid humanities degree.

You wrote
“In the 60’s Overpopulation was going to kill us all. It didn’t, so in the 70’s the big threat was Pollution. We still lived, so in the 80’s it became the Ozone Layer. That didn’t kill everyone so in the 90’s it was the New Ice Age. Oops. The 2000’s brought global warming, but parts of the earth had record cold temps, so that was a bust.”

In each of the cases you cite humanity took action to forestall/prevent the consequences of the threats you cite–the threats didn’t vaporize because they were midges. Overpopulation–the Green Revolution and decline in population growth. Pollution–al the numbers regulatory strictures that Trump seems hellbent on repealing, but compare the air in LA today with 1970, before pollution controls were mandated on motor vehicles. The Ozone Layer-we took some pretty dramatic action world-wide to ban ozone-depleting chemicals, primarily CFCs, which has made the difference and the Ozone layer is recovering. (Don’t go to New Zealand and voice your contempt for the problem and solution, though; those who live next to the problem take it seriously.) The New Ice Age–might have been some articles in the National Enquirer but there was no overall belief that a New Ice Age was coming (not that there wasn’t a few good science fiction books on that topic, for those who enjoy that genre.) Global Warming–you mean some places have record cold temps and that invalidates the concept? Does that mean when we have a record-breaking hot month where I live you swing to Global Warming/Climate change being real? You do understand the difference between weather and climate, don’t you?

One overall comment on the article–having read the comments there’s lots of speculation but precious little–meaning no–data. There are probably a few good PhD theses that could be written on the topic–do conservatives self-select out of academia early? Do they not apply for positions? Do they apply but are not selected? Are they not selected because of their political beliefs?

qvole says: “It’s typical of the left to claim that only conservatives ignore the findings of ‘science!!!’.”

I think many leftists would admit that conservatives are not the only ones who sometimes ignore the findings of science. Vaccines, herbal supplements and alternative medicine are just some of the issues on which people of the left can and do disagree on the science.

But thanks for the link to the book review. It sounds like a good book, and written by someone on the left side of the political spectrum. And to be fair to Rod Dreher, it reminded me of his coverage of the story involving a Canadian doctor with a long history of working with trans youth and the attacks on him over the last few years.

In the Humanities, the ratio of leftist faculty to conservative is 12:1 (5 to 1 in the Economic dept). Among those faculty under 36 years old, the ratio is 23 leftists to 1 conservative. To entertain the idea that rampant discrimination is not occurring in hiring is simply delusional.

There are simply far too many stories of faculty hiring committees just dismissing any non-leftist candidate.

To make the claim that conservatives are “anti-intellectual” is intolerant bigotry. You can get a sense of that bigotry from many of the smug comments on this post (by the way what does disagreement in the POLICY prescriptions for dealing with climate change have to do with teaching 95+% of university classes?).

In many humanities departments, Christians simply don’t need to apply unless they renounce their Christian beliefs for the leftist religion.

“The smart, talented, ambitious people in America gravitate to science/technology or business while the increasingly irrelevant humanities departments give us “deconstruction” and “Queer Studies”.”

But the greatest cheer leaders for “same sex studies”, “creative deconstruction” (and by that I mean the new rules governing money creation once rooted in hard data, have flow the coupe, replaced by forumla and process) are cheer leadered by the business community.

For the simple reason that the the suggested smart people are schooled in the humanities of which you claim are irrelevant. No. It’s that increasing the humanities theories are being made increasingly relevant in the fields of science, technology and business.

I cannot think of a state that hasn’t at least tremored when threatened by business over same relational marriage and now trans “whatever” restrooms.

A more fundamental issue is that conservatives tend to be skeptics about the progressive epistemology that defines the modern university.

Or, more likely, someone who would have been considered a “moderate” in the early 90s is considered (and thus identifies as) a liberal.

Plus, let’s face the facts: conservative role models are wealthy people who made their fortune in something along the lines of “business.” This manifests itself in the bulk of middle class conservatives adopting careers in sales, real estate, and engineering (especially petroleum engineering). These ideals and role models do not lend themselves to encouraging conservatives to slog through a Ph.D. and then find a position at a university where the perception is that they are “teaching” for a living (to be a “teacher” is considered a bad word in middle class conservative circles, with the perception that it is at best a servant-role to be taken on by women as a supplementary/hobby sort of career or at worst a job that exists to subvert students’ minds while collecting a paycheck from the taxpayer for doing no work).

Engineers HAVE TO DEAL WITH NATURE, so they are forced to understand that things are intrinsically and incurably different.

Not quite. Research in science and the humanities is concerned with the limits of what we know and how we can expand that knowledge (even if, sometimes, a field of the humanities is straining too far to discover something “new”). Engineering is about teaching people to solve a certain class of problems, which results in said engineers believing that all problems are like that and wondering why people don’t just accept their solutions.

Engineer here. My bachelors degree included required courses in Calculus, Electromagnetism, Thermodynamics, Statics (Physics), Dynamics (Physics), Computer Architecture, Computer Programming, Analog Circuits, Digital Circuits, required English and several humanities electives. If it was teaching us to only solve a certain class of problems, then it was a very broad class of problems.

M.I.T. is full of both liberals and conservatives in my experience taking a graduate degree there. I don’t think you can pigeonhole engineers.

Tyro,
In engineering you have to design according the geology, the weather and the people using it. What may work in the USA/Western Europe is unlikely to in many parts of the the developing World. In WW2, many of the operatives in the Special Operations Executive were engineers who had worked in the country.
Mining engineers who have developed mines in trouble spots in remote areas often have the best understanding of human nature of any profession.

Only those who study classics( Latin and Greek) and maths can be said to undertaking a liberal arts degree( Trivium and Quadrivium). Scholarship died once Greek was no longer required. Unless one can read Greek then one cannot read the source of Western Civilisation. Liberal arts degrees are nothing more than money making exercises for those who lack the intellect to become scholars.

Mining engineers who have developed mines in trouble spots in remote areas often have the best understanding of human nature of any profession

Engineers have the least understanding of human nature. Many of us studied engineering because, unlike humans, there was was predictability and beauty to the order in which engineering problems provide.

In any case, I cannot underemphasize the degree to which being a “professor” or “teacher” is disdained among the conservative hoi polloi. The mass of PhD students are drawn from the ranks of the children of these conservative families escaping their roots in order to pursue academia.

The heavily immigrant nature of the sciences combined with conservative disdain for immigrants does not help matters when it comes to conservatism in academia.

Conservatism is well represented in BS and MS level engineering simply because it is respected among conservatives and the monetary rewards are immediate, though generally merely above-average.